Turkey Cruising Companion

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17320
Watson, Emma
Book
9780470721667
Wiley Nautical
2010
222
1
Q T/C
On Review
Review Date: 
20/05/2010

Price: £27.99Book Review Cover

Inevitably Emma Watson’s new Cruising Companion invites comparison with Rod Heikell’s Turkish Waters & Cyprus pilot, now in its eighth edition.  The new book is £7 cheaper, but covers a smaller area, excluding the coast north and east of Cesme, the Bosphorus, Black Sea, the coast east of Antalya, and Cyprus. The area covered is, however, where most boats heading for Turkey are likely to go. I failed to detect any difference in purpose between “cruising companion” and “pilot book”. The two introductions cover all the same ground in the same number of pages. Emma Watson’s photographs are better – inviting and informative - the history section longer and better-informed, the language glossary a bit shorter, the chartlets perhaps a bit less informative (or is it just that I’m more used to working with Heikell?).  The harbour descriptions seemed to me less helpful, in that there is less advice on poor holding in places such as Gumusluk and Bozuk Buku, where you’ll be lucky to get even a heavy anchor to penetrate the weed, or off Kalekoy, where it will skate over rock unless you’ve a hefty fisherman anchor. I am something of a Turcophile, but would have preferred a bit less about how lovable and warm-hearted they all are – do such generalisations ever serve much purpose? – and a bit more practical advice about the difficulty of getting to sleep in Kas while the discos blast away into the small hours, and the need to moor early in, say, Tersane in the Kekova fjord or lovely little Mersincik if you are not to be crowded out by tourist gulets with their enormous runs of anchor cable. There is also no mention of the deep seriousness with which Turks regard flag etiquette. David Marler  


 

 

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